Is Richard Armitage at your public library?

Before anything else: Karen, I finally got my hands on a copy of The Artist’s Way today. I think this book is going to be great; I had tears in my eyes while skimming parts of it. Many thanks.

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An early twentieth c. picture of the public library. It still basically looked like this when I started going to it in the 1970s, though a third floor in the same architectural style had been added.

Servetus’s level of book consumption is a bit frightening. Let’s just say: I know the single-visit loan limit at every library I’ve ever used because I hit it at every library I’ve ever used. I don’t think more than ten days has gone by since I was sixteen that I wasn’t at a library, unless I was on a vacation longer than ten days, in which case I went to the library beforehand, prophylactically.

In preparation for the long holiday weekend I found myself today at the public library “in town.” (I grew up in a rural area outside a small city, and this is the “city” library. Though after the last decade, the town is growing to meet the rural area, but even the city doesn’t seem very urban to me.) I’ve been going to this library off and on since I was four, and I’ve always loved it, back when it was downtown in this neo-classical building from the 1900s, and then in the 1980s when it got a new building slightly outside of downtown, where it still is. I remember the smell of the building and the feel of the paper of the books on my fingers. I remember when it was one of the only air-conditioned buildings in town and we went there twice a week in August to beat the heat. It was a reference librarian there who showed me how to read a plat and how it could be the first step to finding out who had owned a property at a certain date. (I was fourteen.)

The public library as it looks today. Yeah, before the 1980s everything “in town” was black and white, and then we discovered color. Interestingly, this was one of the first public buildings in the county to be heated with passive solar heating for most of the year.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but it’s been five years since I spent more than a week or two at home and so I haven’t been in this library for quite a while. It’s changed a lot; it has a manga section, for example, and in looking at the jobs advertised there, I discovered that if you want to work at the managerial level in the library you must have mastered basic Hmong and speak Spanish fluently. One of the biggest changes is its huge DVD section. You can take out up to twenty-five at a time! So Servetus found herself browsing and ran across seasons 2, 3, and 5 of MI-5 [Spooks]. This discovery immediately sent her to the electronic catalog to search.

Search: “Richard Armitage”

Robin Hood, series 1. 3 copies. All checked out, each copy with two to five holds.

Robin Hood, series 2. 3 copies. All checked out, at least two holds on each copy.

Robin Hood, series 3.  2 copies. Both checked out, seven total holds.

MI-5 [Spooks] 7: checked out, no holds.

MI-5 [Spooks] 8: checked out, three holds.

The Elizabeth Gaskell Collection: two copies. Both checked out, nine total holds.

The Impressionists: available, in stack. — The only thing he was in that was in the library collection that could have been checked out today.

North & South: two copies, five holds total.

That’s just if you are looking for productions in which he is specifically indexed by name. If I searched under production names and for the specific episodes in which he appeared, I found the following:

George Gently: 1 copy. Checked out. Two holds.

Malice Aforethought: 1 copy. Checked out. One hold.

Vicar of Dibley (“Wholly Holy Happy Ending”): 1 copy. Checked out. Three holds.

Miss Marple: 1 copy. Checked out. Eight holds.

Inspector Lynley Mysteries: 1 copy. Checked out. Four holds.

Richard Armitage as self-conscious shill for the Spooks 9 DVD edition. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

I think this is pretty good. In my opinion, the only thing that is conspicuously missing is Strike Back, which is only available in the U.S. in blu-ray, and perhaps ShakespeaRE-told and Macbeth. Many of his productions have never been available in Region 1 DVD format, a problem that has driven many of us to purchase region-free DVD players or slither around the darker corridors of the Internet.

Even more impressive, I think, than my local library’s collection of Richard Armitage’s productions, is the high level of usage they appear to be receiving. Look at all those holds. This is a very busy library (they estimate they answer one reference question for every minute they are open), but even so, many, many DVDs on those shelves probably go untouched.

About this data, “I have three thoughts,” as my dad would say.

1. When The Hobbit comes out, he won’t be a total unknown. There are going to be groups of people who are not fans already but who recognize Mr. Armitage. They may not have the name on their lips, but they are going to be thinking, “hey, it’s that guy.” So the ground is really well prepared for a surge in name recognition, I think.

2. Are you a public library user? Are Mr. Armitage’s works in your public library system? If not, is this the time to make sure they get there, so that when the wave hits, people will be able to find them easily and quickly? You could think of it as a public service, helping prepare the treatment for Armitagemania and make sure it’s available in sufficient quantities when it hits. Discovering that none of his audiobooks were in the collection led me to fill out three acquisition request forms for the Naxos / Heyer audiobooks.

3. I shouldn’t have been so worried about finding friends, or should I say, fellow-sufferers, here.

Northeastern Wisconsin loves you, Mr. Armitage!

~ by Servetus on July 2, 2011.